


Dress You Up in My Love

by Antrodemus, Loran_Arameri



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel, Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Vol. 3 (1998), Charles Xavier - Freeform, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Friday (mentioned) - Freeform, Happy Ending, Lockheed (mentioned), M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Patsy Walker (mentioned), Stan Lee Cameo, Susan Storm - Freeform, ben grimm - Freeform, clint barton - Freeform, kitty pryde - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 06:11:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17054648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antrodemus/pseuds/Antrodemus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loran_Arameri/pseuds/Loran_Arameri
Summary: “Stark bought a thirty-foot statue of Captain America. As one does.”After rolling their eyes about Tony’s latest acquisition, the team grows fond of it and even starts piling on seasonal decorations. It’s all fun and games until the pining gets to be too much for even the most patient bystanders.





	Dress You Up in My Love

**Author's Note:**

> In “Galactus the Devourer,” Tony buys a Captain America statue for his “private collection." So here is the “dressing the Cap statue up like a lawn goose” fic. Or a thing that happened one Monday in the SteveTony 616 discord. It’s a magical place. 
> 
> All the thanks go to Wynnesome for actions above and beyond the call of beta and her dirty, filthy, twisted, perverted, wonderful mind.

#### Chapter One: Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair

> “March is the month of expectation, the things we do not know.”  
>  ― Emily Dickinson

VISION: 

“Where will you even put it?” Simon asked, his gesture somehow encompassing the whole of the grounds. “You’re not going to knock out a ceiling, are you? That… monstrosity is too tall by about fourteen feet.”

Tony raised a well-groomed eyebrow as if considering whether Wonder Man’s exceptional density was committed with malice aforethought, and said, “The grand ballroom, obviously.”

“Put what?” my wife asked, sliding into her seat.

“Remember the art auction before this nonsense with the Surfer began?” Wanda nodded. Simon continued, “Stark bought a thirty-foot statue of Captain America. As one does. Apparently. It’s being delivered tomorrow.”

Her eyes went wide. “Tony. You _didn’t_.” 

Tony grinned. “I bought a _Masters original_ , for your information. It’s an investment. A star-spangled investment with a plan. And it’s closer to twenty feet. Twenty-five feet, tops.”

I processed this for several nanoseconds. “Tony… I may be missing something. Buying gargantuan sculptures of their friends… do people… do that? Should I be buying a statue of Wanda?” 

I believe I may never fully fathom the powers of my beloved, for, although I had sent the full sentence to my voder with no possibility of a glitch, after the look she gave me, my mouth was left open but my speech was somehow reduced to a near-silent creak. I made a note that we would, apparently, “talk later.”

“Oh! No, no, no, you misunderstand me, o Vision of Earthly Delights. I bought it _ironically_. It’s funny! I thought it would be hilarious to have a gigantic statue of Cap. We could eat picnics in his shade. Have flying drills around his head and through his legs–”

My wife choked on her tea.

Firestar – Angelica, since she was out of costume – squeaked. “Oh! We could dress it up in holiday clothes, like they do with lawn geese! Oh, say we can, Tony. You know you want to see Steve in bunny ears and a tail!”

“Wanda,” I asked, “are you all right? Do you require the Heimlich, dearest?”

\----

 

#### Chapter Two: April Foolery

> “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire.”  
>  ― T.S. Eliot 

JAN: 

“Where do you even get a 20-foot bunny suit?” Hank asked.

Clint apparently felt he was a few bad jokes short of his daily quota. “Why are you asking, Giant-Man? Thinking about a costume change?” 

I didn’t think that was the most important question. “Why do you have a statue of Steve in the ballroom?”

Tony left the room muttering something that sounded like, “Ironic. Why does nobody get that?”

So, that was why.

“And you lot decided to dress Ms. Masters’ wonderful artwork up in daffodil-yellow plush?” Well, I would have chosen primrose yellow, but the rose bow was a nice touch.

“The artwork is exquisite,” Vision agreed.

Firestar drew up her eyebrows. “But when I found out that Alicia Masters works solely by touch, I was surprised by the… package?”

That was new information. 

“Oh my…” And there was _la raison d’être_ for this newest mansion decoration.

“Why is that here? And why is it wearing a bunny suit?” Leave it to Steve to ask the important questions.

Better me to break the news than the younglings. “Tony made an investment, and it’s Easter this Sunday.”

“We even got a matching outfit in your size, so we can make photos for greeting cards.” 

I knew I liked this Justice kid for a reason.

\----

 

#### Chapter Three: M’aidez

> “Everyone makes divine mistakes the lusty month of May!”  
>  ― Lerner and Loewe

SIMON:

I thought the whole thing would blow over with the rabbit suit, but no. I came back to visit the mansion, and they’d used _leaves_ for Arbor Day. 

Well, one leaf. 

I sent a picture of it to Clint because it was mildly amusing, and Stark had the sheer gall to, at Hawkeye’s suggestion, rig the ballroom door to play “Blame Canada” whenever it was opened. Who taught those city boys how to tell a maple leaf from a fig leaf, anyway? 

Joke was on Stark, though, because if it hadn’t been for that, we might never have known just how often he opened the ballroom door to gaze upon that majestic monolith.

All right, all right, some of us may have guessed, but it’s not really something you want confirmed.

For the record, I was not staring at Wanda’s ass. I was merely following the conversation and the principals happened to be hovering. I am over our… whatever it was. Completely over it. Never even crossed my mind. Besides, her cape doesn’t billow nearly as much as it does in the artists’ depictions. It’s not like we have giant fans in every room.

Well, now that I think about it, we would if the Iron Man suit had a cape. Thank heaven for small mercies and large paperweights.

And speaking of “large paperweights…”

“So, who crowned Steve the Queen of May?”

“Three guesses. And the first two don’t count,” said Jan. 

“Come on, you guys. _Irony_. It’s right there in my name.” 

“Don’t cha think?” sniped Jan.

“Besides,” Stark sailed on, ignoring the pop culture reference with uncharacteristic dignity, “I could hardly give it a socialist theme. I mean, it’s _Captain America_. And stop checking out Wanda’s butt, Simon, there are mirrors all over this room. Have some class.”

Steve chose this very moment to wander in, stepping neatly on my retort. His jaw dropped. He shut it resolutely, then said, “I guess I should be glad you didn’t go with a Maypole,” turned on his heel, and strode from the room.

“Did he just…” sputtered Jan.

“No. I refuse to even think it. Captain America does not make dick jokes,” said Firestar.

Stark, for once, was silent.

\----

 

#### Chapter Four: School's Out Forever

> "If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance."  
>  ― Bernard Williams

From: Emma Frost

To: Cerise

Subject: Re: re: re: Glacial Irregular on Fifth Avenue

>confess I can’t wait to hear what they did for Flag Day.

Darling. You’ll never believe it. Apparently the good Captain nixed the flag toga by citing the “Flag Code” or some nonsense, so they knocked up a barbecue grill the size of a studio apartment, a metre-wide tie, and a “Kiss the Cook” apron for Fathers Day.

I will not say that Anthony Stark’s daddy issues are now officially visible from space, nor will I comment upon his clear desire for someone – one particular someone, at least – to give him a smack and cuddle him. I really don’t have to, I think.

Love to Li!

~EGF

\----

 

#### Chapter Five: Capturing the Flag

> "The glowing ruby should adorn  
>  Those who in warm July are born,  
>  Then will they be exempt and free  
>  From love's doubt and anxiety."  
>  ― Edward Dowden

STEVE:

I should have been staying away. But obviously I’m not capable of doing anything reasonable these days. And since nobody else is seemingly going to say it, I have to do that myself too: Steve, you are an idiot. But July was bound to be the worst so far. And I preferred to get a picture before the laughing and cheering began. Just three days before, they had glued gigantic frowning eyebrows on the thing. And then this. I had fended off the Stars and Stripes last month. I could not hope to be so lucky this time. Although ... it could’ve been worse.

Why did Tony buy that thing? “Irony,” he says, every time somebody mentions it. I knew I had been a fool for not saying no when Alicia had asked me to sit for a sculpture. I understood when Clint mocked me for the public’s obsessions. It was Clint. But Tony used to have more empathy…

I guess it was funny after all, and I felt like a spoilsport for not putting on the matching costumes – the bunny suit or the flower crown. The last one actually was strangely pretty. What do they do with these things after they were finished with them, anyway?

I couldn’t make out yet who it was I could hear talking down the hall, but I figured I’d better scoot before they got in there.

Justice’s voice became clearer every second. “Hank left us the water-soluble paint. Guaranteed not to stain Tony’s precious marble boy after it comes off. It already looks quite nice, but the whole display is still a bit tame.” 

Tame? The statue was painted red, white, and blue all over. It had more stars and stripes than the original Cap costume ever did. It surely had taken some hints from circus attire. If it had been caught up in a flag factory explosion, it would’ve looked less spangled.

Unfazed by that, Justice continued, “We have to think bigger, bolder. It is two holidays in one, right? So, I went through Stark’s old inventions.”

This couldn’t be good. I needed to get a glimpse of what they were up to.

“Vance, you’re going to burn the house down.” At least Firestar had some sense.

“No, that’s the beauty of it: long-lasting, cool-burning fireworks and sparklers. We put them up and ignite them at sundown. We put picnic blankets around it like Tony suggested. And maybe by the end of the night, Steve finally...”

“Stop it. It’s sad enough that Tony tries so hard. I don’t know how Jan put up with it all those years.”

What?

-

The sparklers actually did a lot for the ambience in the end. Jarvis had prepared picnic baskets. Tony had insisted on having burgers in them. I’m still not sure he understood the concept. Somehow Jarvis managed to make them delicious anyway. After dinner, there were presents. Tony started an art scholarship in my name. I would never have thought of that. I love it. I hugged him, and there was shuffling and throat clearing around us. But Tony smiled at me, radiating happiness, and that was rare enough. It was nice.

The fireworks show was a delight. We watched it from the terrace, and although it was not a chilly night, the warmth of Tony leaning against my arm felt good. There were “ohs” and “ahhs” all around us. For a moment, my mind prompted me with the audible impression of Tony making these sounds and– No. That wasn’t what this was. The team had organized a birthday party for a lonely old man. I’m going to appreciate what I have.

It wasn’t so nice when the gathered ex-Avengers walked behind the statue and began to stare at its … backside. 

“I know that handprint.” Hawkeye’s smug grin was exasperating. I knew Tony’s handprint too, when I saw it. Birthday spankings. Knowing Tony, it must have been irresistible. The joke I mean. Nothing more to it. I was grateful nobody suggested that we should go through with the tradition. 

Mostly grateful. 

\----

 

#### Chapter Six: Any Salad Is a Caesar Salad if You Stab It Enough

> “Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy, and wet.”  
>  ― Sylvia Plath

FIRESTAR:

I was helping Tony peel the enormous custom “My Daddy Slew an Ancient Evil in Costa Verde And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt” shirt and some truly hideous Hawaiian-print shorts off it and debating whether we could make the Coppertone ad work with the pose when the Scarlet Witch groaned. “I’m actually impressed. You managed to take a concept like you owning a titanic statue of the object of your totally-manly and incredibly-platonic affections, and make it even more ridiculous, Stark. At least there are no holidays in August.”

Tony and I didn’t usually make a lot of eye contact back then, for whatever reason, but somehow that twinkle just caught me, you know? I grinned back. “Why, Wanda, that sounds like a challenge.”

Friday’s amazing. I swear, I’ve seen her use the “zoom, enhance, change angle” feature until we got a good look at the bald spot at the back of the photographer’s head. However, there’s a level of snark that I am just not prepared to deal with on Tuesdays, and a catty, bratty AI who thinks she should answer only to her maker is about 93 stories above that level, so I walked a plate of vegan lemon bars to the reference desk at the Watson Library. One day, a supervillain will find out about reference librarians and that will be it, the End of Everything.

There are dozens of holidays in August. National Purple Heart Day, for one.1 National Equality Day.2 Colorado Day.3 International Cat Day.4 Eid.5 A bunch of festivals involving the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.6 The Perseids.7 Tony had something planned for Krishna Janmashtami, but the Maggia needed kicking.

Any day that he wasn’t fighting off cockamamie clone shenanigans or howling misunderstood sorcerers or the Brotherhood of Evil Et Ceteras (so, about every third or fourth day), one of us would holler, “Boot up to suit up” (I don’t know, Tony used his repulsor boots instead of a ladder and it kind of stuck), and there we’d be, zipping around ten feet off the ground dressing up Cap and jabbering about everything in general and nothing in particular.

We were working on a “campfire on the beach” scene for National S’mores Day (it’s my opinion that underneath that RT node contraption beats the heart of a thwarted theater kid) when we had the Talk.

I was talking about lunch with the latest superheroine to be spit back out of Death’s revolving door when Tony smirked at me. 

“What?” I said.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just that if I had a nap for every time I heard you mention Patsy Walker’s name recently, I’d catch up on my entire sleep debt from the eighties and wake up not recognizing the President’s name. She’s maaaaar-ried,” he singsonged.

“Not anymore, she’s not,” I snapped, then I think I blushed. “Stark. Drop it.”

“Oh, come on, think of the fun when you come stumbling out of each others’ rooms for a four a.m. Assemble and thinking you’ve fooled everyone but you’re both wearing the wrong yellow bodysuit. Cin-der-el-la, dressed in yell-a...”

“ _Stark._ You can back off any time now. My love life is complicated enough as it is, thank you oh-so-much.” But he just kept grinning.

“I don’t know what’s cuter, the thought that you think you’re fooling any of us for a second, or that you’re still in denial yourself. Are you really the last to know, Angel?” he teased.

I don’t know where it comes from. I know it’s not the Academy, because they would never teach any tactics so simplistic and predictable. Maybe it’s from my time with Bobby and Peter. Maybe it’s something Dad said. For decades, however it started, I’ve gone with, “Warn them once, warn them twice, and if they don’t back down, hit ‘em where it _counts._ ” 

Okay, well, in actual combat these days, it’s more like “fry first, ask questions later,” but talking’s different.

“So you want to talk about how black the kettle is, huh?” I folded my arms, looked him in the eye, then looked pointedly at his reflection, which showed him absent-mindedly stroking the literally-chiseled jaw of his two-story best buddy.

He jerked his hand away like he had just realized he was petting a coral snake. For a second, I really thought he wanted to slap me. I slumped and held up my hand in surrender.

“Tony. Look. This business we’re in, it’s physically intense. We run on adrenaline. We’re always, always fighting for our lives and we know that not even we know how close we come, sometimes. And sometimes, we see a hot body, and that body is attached to someone who makes us feel like we want to be better than we are, like we can be better than we are. Someone who we know always has our back, even when we don’t know if we deserve it. It’s pretty natural to get crushes, like, all the time. If we acted on every little attraction, the team would be even more messed-up than it is. And sometimes, even if you think it might be worth the risk… well, sometimes people just can’t feel that way back, and you have to be grateful for what you have, because it’s, y’know, pretty awesome. What you have.” 

As I talked, I shot a tight, concentrated beam from my finger into the pile of sand and welded the glass outline of a heart into it, wrote AJ + RD + VA + PWH inside the heart, then shoved the whole mess into the wall and ran the oubliette protocol I’m not supposed to know about.

I don’t remember how I got to feel so small and sad when I said that. I don’t remember Tony coming down to my level. I just remember standing there together, not hugging or anything, just kind of leaning against each other, touching foreheads and sniffling together until we decided those marshmallows weren’t going to roast themselves.

And that’s how I almost ruined Tony Stark’s future by giving him advice on how to be _mature_ about things.

Footnotes  
1: We didn’t do anything for that one but don’t think we weren’t tempted. I think Stark actually sent a card with a “small” donation in Steve’s name anyway.↑  
2: A truly enormous flowered hat worthy of Lady Bracknell, a parasol tucked under one arm, and a shoulder sash emblazoned with“Votes for Women!” Steve looked like we’d hit him with a brick, then grinned that dopey, million-watt grin at us and told us he liked it.↑  
3: We put him in a plaid flannel and painted his boots up like hiking boots, complete with insanely long laces, and we gave him a _beard_ , if you can imagine Steve with a beard. Half of us just about died.↑  
4: To-scale, rhythmically-purring stuffed animals draped over his shoulders, over and under his arms, climbing his back and legs, over his feet, and perched upon his head. Most of those, we ended up distributing to local foster families, but Hulk liked the gray one with the purple collar and Thor insisted that the biggest one made a perfect bolster pillow. He was right, too: we still fight about who gets to use it when we get together for movie night.↑  
5: Didn’t do that one; couldn’t figure out how to be fully sensitive to the culture.↑  
6: Ditto.↑  
7: We filled the ballroom with “shooting stars” and tucked a telescope and star charts under the arm of the statue.↑

\----

 

#### Chapter Seven: When You Were a Tender and Callow Fellow

> “I used to love September, but now it just rhymes with remember.”  
>  ― Dominic Riccitello

WANDA:

We had been at this farce for four months then, and it had developed a dynamic of its own. Whenever I thought one of them had finally grown tired of it, it was revived by another. Even Vision engaged in it and called it a team building exercise. Steve seemed to find it amusing by then. And if the white sundress they put on it for Labor Day weekend wasn’t designed by Janet van Dyne herself, I'll straighten my hair and call myself Natasha.

“It looks lovely,” Tony said. For heaven's sake. How was this possible? He was no longer making any attempt at keeping up the facade. As I told Vision as much, he said “Would now be the opportune time to talk to him about it?”

“No, it isn’t. What would you tell him?”

“That we understand what he is doing, but we would like him to stop for his own good. The Captain would have made his reciprocating feelings known by now, as Tony’s behavior does not leave any room for interpretation according to you, Angelica, Janet, Hank, Clint, Dr. McCoy–”

“Yes, but no.” 

So, we were letting it run its course. Maybe I should have let Vision have his way. As enchanted Tony looks around the statue, when Steve is around, he gets equally wistful. 

I’m still waiting for him to try to use some of his beloved tech to make it come alive and love him, since the real Steve clearly doesn’t. Pygmalion 2000.

The dress was gone as fast as it had appeared. On the following Tuesday there was an intermission with a shorter pink version. While putting it up, Angel said, “It would still be a maxi dress on anyone else,” which was answered by questioning frowns from the gentlemen in the room. Except for Tony, who seemed to get the joke, and Steve who has developed the habit of smiling benevolently at everything anybody says as if not to discourage them.

After that they gave the statue a Schultüte – which admittedly was my idea, as it’s really sad Americans don’t get these – and a a ginormous sandwich board reading “School is cool” on the front and “Don’t do drugs” on the back. There was some fine print though: 

> “Except when they are prescribed. Especially if they are essential to your continued well-being. Or it is a government-sanctioned research project and you get to fight Nazis in the end, just to wake up decades later to join a team of like-minded (most of the time) people, only some of whom have taken (partly government-sanctioned) drugs (others might have taken drugs for recreational purposes, but stopped (probably)(we are not including legal drugs because than we have a whole other discussion on our hands (drug policies are built around economic realities (which might not be a problem, but we are not doing PoliSci here))). As I said nobody is taking any drugs (except the one time we went to the spa and every time Steve got up from the treatment chair his robe was clenched between his buttocks and he tried to free it with a very awkward dance because the nice treatment specialists were looking at him inquiring if he needed something, and I just wanted to get a snapshot of it and didn’t look where I was going and stubbed my toe so hard on a fountain that I broke it, and I had to take painkillers for a week)).”

Steve actually turned red the first time he saw the board, and I’m convinced it was because he remembered the awkwardness he had felt about this robe, and not because Tony tried to get a snapshot of his derriere. He is either so straight he couldn’t fathom the idea, or … no, nobody could be that oblivious.

Maybe we should just take the damn thing away from Tony and donate it somewhere safe and far away. For everybody’s sake.

\----

 

#### Chapter Eight: Everybody’s Waiting for the Next Surprise

> “It must be October, the trees are falling away and showing their true colors.”  
>  ― Charmaine J. Forde

VANCE:

It was October! Woooh. Finally! Maybe Angel had had all the fun in August and Tony had gotten all misty-eyed over September, but the best two days were still coming up. I had the cape, I got the flags, I thought shortly about a unicorn, but decided against it. This was going to be great. And then... Halloween. It was going to be be awesome.

-

“That’s quite colorful.” The Vision gives strange yet surprisingly satisfying compliments. 

“Tomorrow is National Coming Out Day. In the right hand, we have the pansexual flag.” Angel rolled her eyes but gave me a peck on the cheek. Bingo! “The rainbow flag is of course the cape.” I couldn’t get all the flags onto the statue itself, so the cape had to represent multiple. Additionally, I got some more paints from Hank so that the trans and the asexual flag were painted haphazardly across both sides of Statue-Cap’s torso, graffiti-style. Go me! 

But in the left hand, we had another cloth flag to represent one more team member. It was pretty obvious, after all. But Steve had come over for the great reveal. Okay, he had been there for the team meeting anyway, and I had made the current getup of his stone alter-ego part of the itinerary. He was tagging along and there was no reason to stop him.

At least, nothing that I could come up with at the time. I mean, it’s not that I didn’t _want_ him to see it, but I didn’t know how it would be received.

Steve had grown to like the marble dude as much as the rest of us had, but did he know about Tony’s orientation? That in itself had nothing to do with Steve – at first sight anyway. I mean it was the reason I knew about it. His crush was the giant red blinking arrow pointing at it. Probably the reason anyone on the team knew about it. But was Tony maybe not even … out? Fuck, this was supposed to be a nice thing for him. 

I had to say something. “On the left that’s…” Was there a safe way out of this?

Steve spoke up. “The bisexual flag.” His smile was budding and were there – tears in his eyes?

And I got another peck on the cheek. This time from Captain America. Not the 20-foot version. “Thank you,” he said. I made eye contact with Tony, who was furrowing his brow, as if calculating how to kick my ass to the West Coast. Then with Angel who looked as confused as I felt. I think I was blushing.

Only the Vision was still admiring Pride-Cap.

-

“Tony needs this,” Angel said. “Steve coming out like that was a lot to take in for him,” she said. “It was a good idea, but this is not only about our fun anymore. Maybe it can be closure and he can let it go afterwards. You see that too, don’t you?” She was coddling me. It was working. 

Instead of making the best statue dress-up yet a reality, I let Tony do Halloween. We were all shut out of the ballroom for three days. This had better be the most awesome Halloween costume to ever grace this city.

I didn’t tell Tony what I had planned when he came to ask if he could have Halloween. Angel made a throat-cutting motion behind him, so I didn’t say anything. She had already blinked repeatedly when I had told her about it.

It would’ve been perfect. From the contacts for the bunny suit, I got an address of people who specialize in custom-builds like this. Fiberglass. Of course they could have built it after the exact specifications. The mask is actually already in the basement. Maybe for Tony’s birthday next year.

“But the Ironman costume,” I said to Angel, absolutely not whining, when we were alone.

“Vance.” That was her ‘I love you, or else I would…’ voice. “I think putting a replica of the armor on the statue now is…”

“Inspired? Amazing?” I really needed it to be one of those. “The best thing ever?”

“No, cruel.” 

“It’s just a costume.”

“You know it isn’t.” Yes, I knew. But that meant I had fucked something up with the flag. Vance Astrovik, the man who finally broke Tony Stark. 

-

Finally, Halloween was here. Tony had insisted we do a great reveal of the ballroom, before the party guests come around. This had better be good and not any kind of last, desperate measure. Or Angel was never going to talk to me again.

It was amazing. The whole room was transformed. It looked like something out of an old movie. There were signs of decay that hadn’t been there three days ago, spider webs and piles of rubble, ivy vines and shattered lanterns. The mirrors had cracks and blind spots and the curtains were blood-red. Everything seemed to be illuminated by candlelight, which I was pretty sure was artificial, but only because I knew Tony had done this. Suddenly there were shrieks and shadows from something flying overhead, and we all instinctively ducked, but Tony just chuckled. Light and sound projections. Equally unprompted, a strange, but very rhythmic song started. It had a lot of different singers, chanting “This is Halloween” over and over. 

The statue itself towered at the center of all this, newly illuminated from below, making it appear even taller than before, and throwing strange shadows at the ceiling. And it was wearing a pinstripe suit and a round white mask. The costume seemed mundane compared to the rest of the decorations. Zipping around the statue’s head was the translucent, holographic form of a wiener dog with a red nose wearing a sheet. I didn’t get it.

Steve muttered, “Jack Skellington,” and turned to Tony. He seemed dazed. 

“I know you love that film.” 

Steve continued to circle his marble-me. I looked at Angel to find out if that was good or bad, or what was happening.

She was smiling at the scene but her eyes told another story. I assumed this wasn’t Tony leaving it alone then.

\----

 

#### Chapter Nine: I See No Reason

> “In November, you begin to know how long winter will be.”  
>  ― Martha Gellhorn

THUNDERBIRD:

“I don’t see why you had me come in costume,” I grumbled.

“Hush, now. Yes, Lockheed, see what I mean about his annoyed face?” Kitty said, that giant... flying lizard flamethrower thing circling me like a mosquito with an autograph book and social anxiety. 

“Hey! That’s a camera on there! What gives?”

Kitty flashed a Mojo grin. “Well… you know the statue of Steve in Avengers Mansion? How they’re doing the thing with the–”

“Costumes. Yes, I know. I can’t help but know. In the meantime, some of us are doing real work that nobody can even begin to guess at. Kitty, did you know that I–”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure, big real newsy-news, you’ll give us the briefing and it will be very serious and I will probably be giving my Riverdance tickets to Mom _again_ because we’ll all be fighting evil on Algol or wherever. But anyway. Lockheed’s helping out by gathering images for a Thanksgiving Day tableau. They’re planning on dressing Steve up like a Puritan and surrounding him with holograms of all our First Peoples friends looking at him suspiciously – don’t look at me like that! We were going to ask for your permission to use the images, but your natural glower is so much more – oh, yes, that’s perfect!”

\----

 

#### Chapter Ten: And the Voice of Two Turtledoves Is Heard in Our Land

> “It is December, and nobody asked if I was ready.”  
>  ― Sarah Kay

TONY:

Confession time: every year, I root for the Grinch. That holiday’s like and out-of-control juggernaut (with none of the rough charm of the actual villain), distorting family, flight paths, and the economy. It shits on both retail workers and people who don’t personally ally themselves to this one particular god, forcing us to listen to covers of the same twenty songs on a loop twenty-four hours a day. I hate the whole mess. It’s emotional blackmail and hollow loneliness, and the only thing that redeems it is sneaking out to bars at 10 p.m. to bond with fellow escapees, or, these days, the burnt coffee, cigarettes, and fluorescent lighting of an AA meeting. That’s the true meaning of Christmas for you: family. Specifically, escaping family.

And Santa? I’ve met the man. There is something incredibly _off_ about him. Your skin will crawl the whole time you’re talking to him. That twinkle is all airbrush. It boggles my mind that Norrin is the only other person who’s on board with figuring out whether he’s a minion of an Elder God.

It’s the one time of year I try to find ways to avoid Steve, who, of fucking course, adores it, setting up even more meet-and-greets with orphans and trying to get us to bake cookies, for Pete’s sake, and I think if he could personally answer all the Christmas cards he gets, he would. It’s like someone made a pogo stick out of a candy cane and covered it with tinsel and forced it all into an (admittedly fetchingly tight) reindeer sweater.

So, no, I’m not fond of Christmas, and I know everyone’s dying to see the statue in a fluffy red-and-white hat, but everyone knows you can’t spell “aesthetic” without A-E-S.

I said as much to Jan over my 5 p.m. morning coffee. (Interdimensional jet lag. Don’t get me started.)

She said, “Well, we’re kind of exhausted by your obscure-holiday binge this summer… what about Hanukkah?”

I mulled it over. “Hm. We didn’t do anything for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur…”

“I think it would be a bit tone-deaf to put a silly costume on for Yom Kippur, Tony.” 

“I only meant–”

“Yeah, I know. It’s a blip on the radar and really just a sop to the get the goyim to stop spewing red and green and tinsel into the workspaces of the decent, hard-working, and fashion-forward. But think about it, Tony…”

“Think about what?” The man himself bounded in, and damned if he didn’t have several inches of curly green ribbon clinging to the back of his shirt. 

Jan leaned in to hug him, discreetly detaching it. “Steve, Tony was just saying that he was thinking of doing Hanukkah for, um. Your statue.”

I braced for impact. Instead, I got that incredible smile beamed at me. I squinted against the glow. Damn. Should have used sunscreen. “I love Hanukkah. I’ve always loved the story. You know,” and here the smile turned almost bashful, “freedom fighters doing their best in the face of those who would force them to stoop.”

I smiled back. “Well, when you put it like that…”

But of course, villains happened. You’d think they’d slow down in the chilly months, maybe perpetrate some small-scale atrocities on the beach at Grand Exuma or Papeete, but I guess you don’t get to be a supervillain by being overly sensible. So it was just hours before the annual holiday party when I realized my rock-hard Avenger did not have a thing to wear, and I had literally a thousand things to do before the doors opened. Desperate times, desperate measures, and so I improvised. 

So anyway. I wasn’t feeling a Christmas tree this year (who decided _that_ symbolism? “We’re going to take this growing, breathing metaphor for eternal life and chop it the hell down, sing songs at it, then race to see who burns who to ashes first”?), and so by some mutual, unspoken accord, all our presents were placed around the statue’s feet. I’d dug up a splendid menorah (fine, chanukiah, if you’re a purist like Steve) the week before to put beside it – designed and painted by Chagall and worth somewhere between a Bugatti and a fighter jet (and completely unstable without an invisible cantilever system designed by some anonymous engineering genius my father spent decades tracking down without success) and painted the statue with symbols cribbed from a kid’s book from the library and a little bit of trompe-l'oeil to make my baby blockier. 

It wasn’t my most inspired effort (that was a Hindu holiday in August, but stupid mafia was doing Their Thing), but even the hickiest rubes from the ass end of Cooter Lake knew what a dreidel is, and our Jewish friends seemed to love it.

You know the secret of the Avengers holiday party, right? Right. It’s Mama Carbonell’s secret eggnog recipe. Oh, you want that recipe? Well… okay, seeing as how it’s you, I’ll tell you, but you have to take the secret to your grave. Beyond your grave. If I find out that you told a single living soul, I’ll see to it that the universe you live in is deleted from existence. Trust me, I know a guy who’s working on that. 

Okay, the secret recipe, here goes:

...have an amazing caterer. You think I’m joking, but we once detected an attempted AIM infiltration because those posing as the caterers used crummy store-bought eggnog, even though they tried to punch it up with melted ice cream (no, I’m not kidding) and enough happy drugs to (almost) wipe the scowl off Namor’s face. Stan and Joan have never failed me. I don’t know what I’ll do when they’re gone… aw, who am I kidding? They’re going to live forever, a man, his stunning wife, his appalling mustache, and an army of Brownian-motion berserker-waiters in ink-stained tuxedo pants. (I think he hires directly from CUNY’s arts undergrad program.)

“A great... miracle… happened… _there_!” wobbled Wanda. (Mama Carbonell’s eggnog was apparently even more deceptively-strong than usual this year.) She flicked a bead of red energy at the statue, which flew around to light up the statue’s lower back.

“It has a lovely body, with legs so short and thin,” graveled Ben, “And when it gets all tired...” He somehow made it sound like a sea shanty. (I made a note to check for Asgardian “Irishing,” because the quantity of booze that would get the Thing’s 500 pounds drunk enough to sing should involve a bucket. A few buckets.)

“It drops and then I win!” the room roared back. One of the telekinetics started playing the baby grand remotely and suddenly we had a sing-along on our hands.

Telekinetics… oh. That was a problem. Because the _other_ secret to a great metahuman holiday party was making sure you turned on the psychic dampeners well in advance so the telepaths could drop their walls without getting contact drunk (or contact horny, or contact angsty or TMI) from their fellow revellers.

“Steve!” I said, keeping my smile fixed, “May I borrow you?” Which is Avengers party code for “drop everything and consult with me privately NOW.” 

“Sure, Tony!” Steve dropped out of his little barbershop quartet and grabbed my elbow. “So where’s that dip you were raving about?” Without moving his lips and pitched to reach my ears only, he murmured, “What’s up?”

“Just… can you get to that cherub over there and pull its sash down about an inch, inch and a half? Without attracting attention.” Steve frowned. He didn’t lecture me on the difference between cherubim and putti, that’s how seriously he was taking me.

And then, the attack. Because you can’t have a cocktail party with our crowd without someone threatening the very fabric of spacetime, can you? It’d be like a party without tiny bagel dogs.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Professor Xavier was blocking our path with his chair and flailing away with a sledgehammer at the foundations of everything good in my life.

“A little bit late for that, I’m afraid,” he intoned in a mellifluous baritone that ought to have been rousing the troops for Saint Crispin’s Day. “But no harm, no foul, eh, old friend?” I narrowed my eyes. In my experience, Charles’ “old friend” was the direct equivalent of anyone else’s “You want some? COME GET SOME.”

“Steve!” he continued in a voice sloshing with… well, let’s call it good cheer and bonhomie. “I confess, I’d no idea what to get you… it seems that you are massively content with your possessions, needing not one jot more than what you have. But I see you are lacking… information. Wonderful stuff, knowledge. Useful stuff. You don’t even need to dust it. 

“You see…” and he pointed to me with a slightly-unsteady finger, “this man is deeply, terribly, tormentedly, and very lustily in love with you.” 

No. 

_Nonononononononononono._

“He thinks he’s hiding it, but really, Captain Rogers, I think you may be the very last person in the room, if not the solar system, not to know. We’ve all been waiting for you to get a clue and deal with him.”

And what did I do? The only thing I could do. I did my best.

By which I mean, I lied my shiny metal ass off. I looked at the professor like I had no idea whether he was pulling my leg or having a stroke and said, “I don’t know where you’re getting your ‘information,’ from, Professor, but I hope you kept the receipt. I love Steve, yes. He’s my best friend, why wouldn’t I love him? But… not that way. Sorry.” I feigned a rueful grin. “I’m sorry. I… look, I didn’t think it would be a problem, but being around this many drunk people… I have to go.”

That last wasn’t a lie, not the slightest bit. And so, I hurried out and spent the evening and the night swilling burnt coffee with my family at AA… the family of refugees, flotsam and jetsam of shipwrecked lives. 

By the time I got back (lots of us were having a rough night that night, and I may have hit more than one meeting. NYC is good that way), the sky was lightening to a pearly pre-dawn gray. I made my way to the ballroom to see how trashed it was, and was pleased to find that it had already been cleaned up, all repairs made, and festooned with the same number of chandeliers it had started the evening with. I was glad I could count on my aides-de-camp to tip the staff well… they’d certainly earned it. By signs throughout the house, I gathered that, although not all the guests had made their way home, everyone had been bundled off to one bed or another.

Well… everyone but one person. Of fucking course.

Steve was on a ladder, polishing the statue clean with some kind of brush and a soft rag.

Well. So much for dodging that little chat.

I started to sneak out, but he said, “Hey,” softly, and I knew he’d heard me. 

“Hey, yourself,” I answered. “Not a fan of the dreidel thing?” I was glad that our relative positions didn’t force me to avoid eye contact. Not that I was avoiding eye contact. 

He chuckled. “Oh, I liked it, all right. I just thought, well, it _is_ my statue, even if you own it, and I haven’t really participated in this… whatdoyoucallit. So… I had an idea for some holiday cheer.”

Ah. “I don’t really think we’ll be doing many costumes for this thing anymore, Steve. My heart’s just not in it. Not if people keep… taking it the wrong way.”

“That’s a shame,” he said. “I thought it was kind of fun. But you can’t stop it before I get a turn. That wouldn’t be right. Here, pull up that stepladder to the front of the statue and help me with this thing.” He was looping some sort of belt around to the front of the statue. His arms were just a fraction of an inch too short to work the buckle, no matter how proportionally narrow his effigy’s waist might be.

I climbed the ladder and frowned. Inches below Captain America’s 5-on-the-Mohs-scale giant crotchbulge was absolutely not how I’d expected to end my night, and I never in a million years thought I could feel sad and puzzled in this position.

“Winghead… this buckle, it’s impossible. Even without the greenery in the way.”

“Nah, it’s easy if you know the trick. Here, let me show you. Keep that together,” he said, climbing down his ladder and up behind me, looping his arms under mine to grab the ends of the belt and hold it closed over my head. I looked more closely at the catch above us. “Steve… this is mistletoe.”

“Imagine that,” he breathed in my ear.

“Steve,” I said carefully, “You can’t have two people on one stepladder. It’s… it’s dangerous.”

He put a steadying arm around my waist, but somehow my heartbeat didn’t go down. And I knew that he wasn’t carrying a gun, not holstered there. I swallowed. “Yes,” he whispered. “Very dangerous. So maybe we can go someplace safe. And talk.”

We got down to the ground. I’m not sure that was any safer, but we talked. 

 

Eventually. 

\----

 

#### Chapter Eleven: Resolution

> “It is January  
>  “And I am tired of being brave.”  
>  ― Arzum Uzun

REED:

I met up with Sue for skating and cocoa at Rockefeller Center after the war council of the week. You have to take every chance at sweetness you can get when you live where we live.

“So... “ she asked. “Did you see Alicia’s statue? She’s really curious about what they did for January. Father Time? Baby New Year? Or did they just give up and put up a billboard about Stark’s pining?”

“Aw, I think it’s cute how they’ve found a way to advertise how weird things are between the two of them,” I said. 

Now, I am completely aware of my reputation in meta and non-meta circles alike for being a bit of a dick. I relish it, in fact. You can’t save the universe without using every means at your disposal and that fact that you’re here to judge me for it absolutely justifies that. But I pay for it, and I am sure I will pay for my deliberately waiting until my wife took a long swig of her hot chocolate before I said, “And, speaking of using the statue to telegraph the state of their relationship, it was completely butt-naked today. I think it will be for a while.”

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> If somebody should be fond of this period in canon, we are sorry (that’s a lie) (sort of). Neither of us had read Volume 3 when we started our story, and the project had so much momentum that once we had time to blink at the shattered remains of canon compliance, the story was pretty much fully-formed in its own right. We tried to make it fit, but the Avengers that year had more churn than a Milkmaids Gone Wild reunion, and the changes felt awkward, confusing, and kludgy. We decided at some point that everything is happening in a pocket dimension, possibly created by the gravitational force of Steve’s marvel butt or the fact that Steve and Tony being happy is against a fundamental law of nature in 616. So, no Triune Understanding (villains that sound like polyamorist jargon are the worst, anyway), no Steve-flounce, no Silverclaw, no She-Hulk, and Vance and Angelica stick around a bit more consistently than they do in canon.
> 
> Emma Frost is currently not the headmistress of the now-closed Massachusetts Academy, but kept the Email server just in case and to ~~trade juicy gossip~~ keep up relations with the Shi’ar court. 
> 
> “RD” is Bobby Drake, Iceman. “VA” is Vance Alexander, Justice. “PWH” is Patsy Walker Hellstrom. But it doesn’t matter, because we’ve run the oubliette protocol. Shh -- you’re not supposed to know about that, possibly because one of the authors made it up specifically for this story.
> 
> The flags we used in October may actually not all have been in use in the year 2000, but the Avengers are forward-thinking, so we took a little bit of temporal liberty to use them as a plot device.
> 
> Schultüten are really keen. You should look them up.


End file.
